1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image holding member and an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to an image holding member mounted in an image forming apparatus using an electrophotography and an image forming apparatus including the image holding member.
2. Related Art
Conventionally know for image forming apparatuses are electrophotographic image forming apparatuses. In such an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, the surface (outer circumferential surface) of an image holding member such as a photosensitive drum is charged, an electrostatic latent image according to image data is formed on the charged image holding member, and the electrostatic latent image is made visable by developing the electrostatic latent image by a toner, thereby forming a toner image on the image holding member. The toner image formed on the image holding member is directly transferred to a recording medium by transferring means or transferred to a recording medium through an intermediate transferring body and fixed onto the recording medium, thereby forming an image on the recording medium.
In such an image forming apparatus, in order to remove adhering impurities such as a toner which is not transferred on the recording medium or the intermediate transferring body and is left on the image holding member, a cleaning blade such as a cleaning blade is provided and the foreign material on the image holding member is scraped off and removed by the cleaning blade. However, when a method for scraping and removing the foreign material on the image holding member is used, the surface of the image holding member is worn by friction between the cleaning blade and the image holding member and thus the life span of the image holding member is shortened.